The present invention involves a high performance cyclone separator which is a multi-stage axial flow cyclone separator used for separating heterogeneous mixture of fluid dispersion, both in continuous phase and discontinuous phase which are not efficiently performed by conventional cyclone separator.
Although the widely used cyclone separator can be produced with low cost compared with other fluid separation method, its limitation is low separation efficiency especially when used with heterogeneous mixture of fluid in continuous phase, e.g., milk, latex, and the like which cannot be efficiently separated by conventional cyclone separator. The disadvantage of the conventional cyclone separator is that it operates as a single process, i.e., there is only one source of dynamic force for creating a swirling flow which injects fluid tangentially to the internal wall of the cylindrical chamber, and the swirling flow thus generated is a free vortex, i.e., a swirling flow swirling toward its center, which creates a higher accelerating centrifugal force near the center as opposite to the distribution of the fluid when has been applied with a centrifugal force. The separation doesn't occur in this portion but at the position where the swirling flow reaches the end of the cone and a counter-swirl occurs as a force vortex. The heavy phase is separated via the under flow and the light phase is separated via the upper flow. The process ends with no possibility to increase separation efficiency by further connecting multiple cyclones to increase swirling velocity and residence time. As in generating a swirling flow by injecting fluid via a tangential inlet of a conventional cyclone when several cyclones are connected, the preceding swirl will not be sustained and the whole process has to be restarted since concerning the flow from the upper outlet of preceding cyclone into a tangential inlet of subsequent cyclone, the preceding swirling flow will be destroyed by tangential flow in the cylindrical wall of the subsequent cyclone.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,289,611 A disclosed an invention of a multi-stage cyclone separator for filtering dust in air. The dust filter has a shape of 2 cylindrical tubes longitudinally coupled to each other, helical blades being mounted in both cylindrical tubes, a coaxial second cylindrical tube being inserted in the outlet end of the first cylindrical tube, the second cylindrical tube being smaller to a certain extent than the first tube to provide a gap between both tubes, a cylindrical tube inserted to the outlet end of the second cylindrical tube being smaller to a certain extent than the second cylindrical tube to provide a gap there between, air being introduced via the inlet of the first cylindrical tube via the helical blades to create a swirling flow. The swirling flow generates a centrifugal force which throws dust with large diameters toward the internal wall of the first cylindrical tube to be separated. The air with dust having smaller diameters flows into the second cylindrical tube through helical blades having an angle of less degree and smaller cross section which accelerates the swirling flow. The fine dust is thrown by centrifugal force to the wall of the second cylindrical tube and separated.
The multi-stage cyclone separator according to said patent has a disadvantage in that the acceleration of the swirling flow using helical blades in each stage is creating a new swirl but not actually an acceleration of the preceding swirl. The helical blades in the next stage destroy the fluid distribution pattern separated by density when applied with centrifugal force from preceding swirl and generates a new swirling flow. Therefore, an increase in number of stages of the multi-stage cyclone separator according to this invention does not promote the fluid separation in layers distribution by the acceleration of swirling velocity from the added cyclone stages but only generates discontinuous intermittent swirling flows from a low velocity swirling flow to high velocity ones. Said multi-stage cyclone separator according to the invention cannot generate increasing swirling acceleration and desirably increase residence time of the system by increasing stages of cyclone to increase separation efficiency as desired.